You have not lost until you quit: real stories of success and failure in business
No Bullsh!t, February 28, 2025, 71 min, 746 views. The guest is Max Shchegolev, entrepreneur, investor and endurance athlete, who has built several property businesses over the last seven years. The conversation is built around one idea: you have not lost until you give up.
| Published | |
|---|---|
| Length | 71 min |
| Views on YouTube | 746 |
| Language of the episode | Russian |
| Where to watch and listen | YouTube, Spotify, Telegram |
Date, length and view count according to data from the episode page on YouTube, as of the page update date shown in the footer.
In short
Max describes the path from oil industry engineer to entrepreneur: leaving a job with a relocation offer on the table for the sake of entrepreneurship, a first business with a partner, being deceived by an investor and taking on debt, divorce and loss of health, frozen accounts and income in 2022, losses in crypto and a back injury brought on by stress, and the betrayal of a trusted managing partner. Alongside each crisis he describes the way out: conversation, learning and a change of focus, moving to Thailand and building a business selling property to foreigners.
Key ideas
- You have not lost until you give up: a line from a mentor, with the point that until you leave the last safety net of employment you cannot push a result all the way.
- Everything that happens to you, including someone else's betrayal, is 100 percent your responsibility: seeing your own contribution, loose agreements and weak control, is what makes the next attempt different.
- Paid or free consultations with top operators and owners of larger companies are a shortcut: a well-framed question replaces months of trial and error.
- Criteria for choosing a new direction: the size of the market, enough to scale into the billions even at a one percent share, genuine personal interest, and existing expertise.
- Quality decides quantity: not the number of hours worked but focused quality action produces the result.
- The main constraint on a company's growth is the team rather than the idea or the capital: the difference between a million and a billion company is who is at the helm.
The full transcript
The episode is recorded in Russian, and the full transcript of the conversation is on the Russian page of this episode. English and Spanish subtitles for the strongest episodes are rolling out on YouTube in waves.
Open the transcript